After years of struggling with task management apps (Things, Todoist, Omnifocus) I have decided to take a different approach. Instead of focusing on managing project lists I am now focusing on managing tasks on my calendar.
Here’s how it works:
- Create a reminder in Agenda
- Reminder gets created in Apple Reminders
- Reminder shows up as a task in Fantastical
- You can drag that task to any day/time on your calendar
- The day/time updates across Apple Reminders back to Agenda
- Click the task complete in Fantastical and it’s marked complete in Agenda.
To make this all work all of my tasks in Apple Reminders are in the following folders:
This Week (all tasks are assigned to a day)
Next Week
This Month
Next Month
Long Term / On Hold
Important: Review your lists weekly
Agenda is the place i manage all of my projects and Fantastical is where i schedule and get them done.
With this approach I’m getting more of my important tasks done by scheduling them on my calendar. Apple Reminders acts as the conduit between Agenda and Fantastical. Hopefully this all makes sense but I’m happy to answer questions.
Stay well
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Hi, how do you manage appointments which do not show up in agenda as fantastical manages your calendars?
Interesting. I use Fantastical but have never really thought about using it to engage with Reminders.
I use you manually move each reminder into those folders?
Personally I’d rather be able to move reminders around within Agenda, as I find the less apps I have to review the more likely I am to do it. I’m trying to do all such reviewing in Agenda. One thing that makes it difficult is that uncompleted reminders don’t ‘roll forward’ to show in Today, so they are easily missed.
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Great workflow, and indeed I can see how the Calendar and Reminders apps can take a backbone role in managing the flow of your projects, thanks for sharing!
I have three calendar feeds that flow into Fantastical from Google, Apple iCloud, and Exchange. Together this comprises all of my scheduled meetings and appointments. I can view them all either in Agenda or Fantastical. Being able to to schedule my tasks on my calendar between my meetings and appointments helps me maximize my productivity.
Here’s another way to think about it.
Use Agenda to generate tasks based on meetings, project plans and ideation. These all flow into Apple Reminders.
Use Apple Reminders to organize your tasks into time based folders such as This Week, Next Week, This Month, etc. All tasks in the This Week folder get scheduled with day.
In Fantastical those scheduled tasks from Reminders show up on each day. You can then move them to a specific time as your schedule allows. When you complete it check it off and that completed status will cascade back to Agenda.
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Let me ask you once again, sorry for it, but Fantastical connects directly to each account, you can use it via the iphone accounts or via direct line from fantastical. I connected my account directly in fantastical, so they are not on my iPhone/ipad at all, only in fantastical. I couldn’t manage to link agenda to one of these (of course) as they are in fantastical only …
so you have your accounts in iphone/settings/accounts and let fantastical and agenda connect to it, right?
Hi Christian,
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. There is no direct connection between Fantastical and Agenda. The connection between them is Apple Reminders. When a reminder is created in Agenda it will be sent to Apple Reminders. Fantastical does integrate with Apple Reminders and gives you the ability to actually schedule those tasks within your Fantastical calendar. Once a tasks is marked complete it is automatically marked complete in both Apple Reminders and Agenda.
I hope this helps.
John
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Just want to throw in that it works exactly the same way with BusyCal (my calendar app of choice).
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And…BusyCal also has the advantage of NOT being subscription based. $50 includes all Mac and iOS devices. Haven’t had to upgrade for years, but I’m encouraging them to adopt the Agenda pricing model. Similar small team.
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